


Hip Bones

by bulfinch



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, tearful reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-10 00:30:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bulfinch/pseuds/bulfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year and a day. A year and a day of waiting and wanting and the King’s gaze snapping to the door every time it opened...A year and a day and Merlin was standing at his gate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hip Bones

At first Arthur had been afraid. Afraid that the world had taken him from Arthur, this man who had appeared out of the shifting air before the castle gates. Black hair grown long and wild, hollow cheeks made dark with stubble. No longer soft.

A year and a day. A year and a day of waiting and wanting and the King’s gaze snapping to the door every time it opened. No matter where. No matter when. Falling, heart always falling when it was not this man at the gate. And to have walked out of nothing, out of Arthur‘s dreams and nightmares and back into his reality. A year and a world of torture later.

And a day late. How like him.

At first Arthur had been afraid to hold him, afraid to touch him. He could feel the power the world had kissed onto this stranger’s skin, that the elements had battered into it. The power that had bloomed from somewhere inside him and had grown up and into his countenance. The power, the knowledge, he had left to find.

And so Arthur had halted, somewhere in the midst of things. Unsure of whether to run to him, or crumble, or concede his loss. But as the guards swept back to let him enter, this stranger at his gate, he turned his gaze to Arthur and trained it there.

And Arthur found his answer. Hidden somewhere in the pale blue of the irises, revealed somehow in the whites and corners and pupils of those eyes and the tears that were filling them. He had found it then, that burning, blinding star that always was lurking somewhere in that now familiar gaze that spoke of secrets and mysteries and love. Of dragon’s wings and shared sleeps and told the story of their strange, meandering history that seemed more surreal than legends.

A year and a day and Merlin was standing at his gate.

Arthur laughed at the folly of his fear, and wept out his relief.

 

He kissed the hollows of Merlin’s hip bones. The peaks and valleys of his ribs, the rocky landscape of his knees and ankles and elbows. Marvelled at how power had come with the price of such fragility.

“Where did you leave the rest of you?” he asked, breathless.

Merlin laughed “Somewhere in the wind” he replied and wrapped the skin and sinew and bone of his arms around Arthur.

And Arthur was laughing too and promised to build him up with cakes and sweetmeats and posset, and he guarded him against the cold with his body. Tongue and lips and hands, barely having to remember, made Merlin’s breath turn to music and fill the room with sound. Fingers pushing deep inside him to find the place that made Merlin’s body arch and writhe and shiver and surrender against Arthur‘s, feeling Merlin’s muscles stretch and twist under the heat of his palm, against the skin of his stomach.

 

Merlin whispered stories to him when the night was darkest. Lit his mind with distant places, edges of the world, the belly of the earth and what he had found there. Told him of secrets whispered to him by druids and dragons and dryads. Spoke of almosts and anywheres and always. Of chases and chants and chances.

“For you” he would say, “All for you”.

And Merlin found his way into him, fingers spread and stretching over Arthur’s spine and shoulders and snaking down his sides. And Arthur was quaking as Merlin memorised him, convinced himself that Arthur was solid, tangible. Real. That he was gripping fevered, sweat-slicked skin and muscle, not rock and moss and distance. Moaning as Merlin buried himself in him, gasping as Merlin’s voice thrummed, hoarse and breathless into his ear “For you. All for you”.  


End file.
